


Of Being Parentheses

by angelgazing



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius is just a pause that keeps repeating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Being Parentheses


    pa·ren·the·sis  
    n. pl. par·en·the·ses (-sz)

1\. Either or both of the upright curved lines, ( ), used to mark off  
explanatory or qualifying remarks in writing or printing or enclose a sum,  
product, or other expression considered or treated as a collective entity  
in a mathematical operation.  
2.  
1\. A qualifying or amplifying word, phrase, or sentence inserted  
within written matter in such a way as to be independent of the surrounding  
grammatical structure.  
2\. A comment departing from the theme of discourse; a digression.  
3\. An interruption of continuity; an interval: "This is one of the things  
I wasn't prepared for the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of  
nothing" (Margaret Atwood).

 

\---

 

**8.**

Remus sighs and the wind rustles the pages of his book. He looks at you and squints against the sunlight coming off the lake.

You pause, the knuckles of your fingers brushing across his thigh when you breathe in. Your hair blows in your face, and it tickles your cheek.

His fingers are in the grass, white snakes in the green and you tilt toward him. He's got long lines, you think, all over all of him is lines and strength built in deep. (You wonder where he got it, where you could find some of your own.)

You open your mouth to say—

"Sirius," he says, frowning slightly.

And you shrug and look back across the lake at James trailing after Evans who's dressed in flowing fucking symbolic white. Her skirt sways around her calves in the wind.

The pages of Remus' book rustle in the breeze.

 

**14.**

They never say who they think it is and neither do you.

Peter shifts uncomfortably when Remus comes into the room now, though, and that's how you think you might've known.

And you curl your fingers tightly in the folds of his robes, press your mouth against the hollow of his throat and until he's gasping and shifting and desperate beneath you like you think that'll make it not real. That'll make him change his mind.

You imagine (years and years of nothing but days lying in the grass while he reads poetry, his fingers in your hair and your head on his thigh. You dream of warm, empty days where it's like it never was but how it always should've been. His eyes are heavy in the mid-afternoon sunlight, and his lashes fall against his cheeks and you press close to him and you don't know of anything closer to heaven.) that it's different, better. You try and pretend it's someone else.

You never manage to make it be.

 

**10.**

He's got violet smudged under his eyes—cold circle bruises of hurt and tired. His fingertips are white, ragged, wrapped and clumsy with rust-stained bandages.

He closes his eyes when you enter the room, when you step up beside him to brush your thumb across the edges of white. The tape Pomfrey used to hold bandages against his neck, his shoulder. Blue-black bleeds out from under it.

(Won't stick with magic, he told you, has be done like a bloody Muggle would have to do it. And he laughed like—Like he was a bitter old man that's been broken and bloodied and bruised again and you wanted—You wanted.)

"Why?" he asks, like he was telling a first year the way to transfigurations.

"I-I don't… I don't know," you answer, dropping your head, dropping your eyes. And it's—(a fucking lie, is what it is and you know it. Snape said, "I'll figure it out" and Evans said, "No, you won't" and you realised that _she_ knew and it was like a fist to your stomach and she had red-hair that made James go pansy-arsed and she clutched her Charms book close to her chest and dug her fingernails into it like it was flesh and she had read all the books that Remus had and knew all his favourite ones and they could talk for bloody hours about it and she loved him and she could still turn James to lake-water-soggy-mush with a flick of her wrist when she didn't even know he was paying attention and Remus smiled for her and _told her_ and you wanted to shout, "Listen, you Mudblooded cunt, you can't- you can't—" But Snape said, "You know nothing about what I'll do, _Mudblood_." And so, you said—) really fucking cold in here. You can't stop shivering.

"The truth, Sirius," Remus says sharply, catching your wrist when you try to pull away, try to runaway with your tail between your legs like a fucking Slytherin would. The bandages around his fingers scratch the inside of your wrist, rough fabric over thin skin. It must itch him like mad.

"I deserve that much."

You look at him, at the way the moonlight filters in through foggy windows, the fire across the room is reflected in his eyes. He's—You just don't—

Blue-silver-pale against warm-orange-red, his fingers hurt and angry but not hurting, his mouth a thin line of _fuck you, you stupid fucking fuck you fucking lying fucker you think I don't know you think I can't see you think I don't deserve to make you say it you think I didn't earn the right to make you bleed you think I didn't buy it with a pound of my flesh_.

And you— You choke on it, choke on the words tumbling over each other in your throat, on the way his eyes narrow when they open, on the way you can't stop shivering. You choke and you can't—But you know that—So you—

You sway forward, drunken on too little sleep and not enough food and too much worry. Sick with the smell of blood, the sight of his bleeding, still, bleeding slowly. Brown-red stains on the white he wears that grow and grow and—

You kiss him. Press your mouth to the corner of his and (you think _this is it, this is what I've wanted, it makes sense now. Oh fuck, oh Merlin, oh Zeus, oh god, oh fuck, this is what I've always wanted._) he grunts with surprise and pushes you away.

_(You stupid fucking fuck, you fucking lying fucker. You daft fucking bastard look at what you've fucking done you fucking two-faced fraud. You phoney fucking cunt. You always fucking do this you fucking ruin everything. You're a fucking bomb and you fucking know it. You're the fucking destroyer of better things than you.)_

He laughs and it sounds tired, sounds worn down and beat down and deep-down bone tired. He says, "You've got a funny way of showing it, haven't you?"

 

**2.**

"Evans," James says, sitting down next to Lupin and throwing his arm around his shoulders all _good friend, my mate, good pal_. Bastard knows how to get his way cause he learned it from you.

Lupin tenses, his spine going straight with suspicion. "No," he says, right off like he won't even consider it.

"You get along well, don't you? All sorts of bookish, academic, stick-in-the-mud, little girl glee with you two, right?"

"Not helping your case," you mutter, and watch as Lupin doesn't—very carefully does not smile. You sit down opposite them in the grass, the branches of the tree above you sway in the breeze.

"She hates you," Lupin says, still not smiling but only just not. "Said she hoped you fell into the lake and were forced to marry the squid, to be sure you wouldn't reproduce one day. No telling what kind of thick-headed, insolent, inbred child you'd have, she said, with whatever half-witted squib who'd be the only one to have you."

James sputters, like any of this is a shock to him. Like he's never heard it before. He sputters and stutters and is red-faced as Snape that time you'd turned his hair Hufflepuff yellow and he'd had to walk through the school with it.

You laugh, moving to throw your arm over Lupin's shoulders (all _my mate, my friend, good pal_) where James' arm isn't anymore. "S'not very academic of her," you say, your words slurring with laughter you try to hide when he smiles wide.

"Just a little girl glee," he says dryly, shooting a look to the side of him at James gone quiet like he's making a plan.

"Remus," you laugh, fingers curling at the back of his neck (a pause, a comma, the punctuation he adores so dearly) before you pull away.

(You mean, _I like you, welcome to the fold, my friend, you're one of us now._)

 

**9.**

"I-" you say, your fingers curling around the extra fabric of her sleeve.

"You," she says, her eyes narrowed, "don't."

"I do," you whisper, closing your eyes to—"You don't get to say."

"You don't know what love _is_," she snaps, fists clenched and she pulls her sleeve away and hits the wall behind her with the force.

"Maybe." You think you've got something in your eyes, maybe, like the dust that Remus breathes out in the library has finally come back to—Your eyes are burning, sharp and hard and you've got this hitch of something in your chest like—"Maybe," you choke, trying to whisper, trying to say, trying to shout. You choke. "But, I—"

"If you did, you never would've done _this_." Evans has her hands on her waist, and she's tiny, almost a head shorter than you are and shaking white with fury. The torches on the wall just light her hair on fire; light her eyes with flame like _this is anger, you stupid prick, this is what people who care for other people do_. "He was your _friend_, Sirius."

"I know—"

"You don't know anything, Sirius. Not a goddamned thing. Not if it _bit_ you."

 

**7.**

James catches your wrist. He says, "Hey, mate, is it just me or is Evans more—What's the word—"

"Aiming to kill?"

"Yeah, that." He tilts his head to the side and you don't… You do not meet his eyes and you did not see a thing, before. When it was dark and she was swaying close to Moony even though.

"More than usual?"

He nods, solemnly, like this is life and death and (You imagine that it is, that's it's the Marauders against the world, against the bloody queen of the sea, her red hair her secret weapon as she flips it over her shoulder and gives doe eyes to your captain to make him surrender it all.) Of The Utmost Importance.

"Then no," you say, flashing a grin. "Not more than usual."

 

**3.**

"Gryffindor," she sneers, and (the expression makes her ugly. She's your mother, and she's beautiful posing for her portrait, her back straight and her hair long and her dress flowing, ruffles that sway when she walks with quick, hard steps of fury. She sneers and she's real again, she's got lines around her eyes and mouth, she's supposed to be beautiful but she isn't. She knows it, sometimes, you think, when she's shrieking like a nutter about the house the hat chose for you.) turns away.

"Yeah," you answer. "Yeah."

She pretends you aren't there.

(You spent Easter hols at the Potter's, where James' mum baked pies and ran fingers through his hair when you'd both run past, trying to tame it. His dad would grin, puffing on a pipe and not bother telling her it was no use. Everyone knew it anyway. They laughed and helped you and James figure out how to fill the eggs without breaking them or building them. They probably knew what you wanted the spell for, snakes popping out of poached eggs at breakfast all across the Slytherin table, but they helped, they smiled. Mrs Potter pressed a kiss to James' forehead and then your own and sent you back to Hogwarts with tears in her eyes.)

You remember overhearing Dumbledore sadly saying that love was taught, it doesn't come naturally; you have to learn to love. You think it's bollocks though, when your mother acts as though you aren't sitting at the dinner table. You know love is bollocks.

The potatoes explode, and Regulus is too scared to laugh with you. Yeah, you're a Gryffindor, and you like your brothers there more anyway.

 

**6.**

(You don't watch as Evans kisses Remus under the mistletoe. You don't watch him gently push her away. You don't listen from the shadows as he says, "friend" and "James" and "kill me a lot" with an almost sad smile like _you know, it would be alright otherwise, maybe, we'll still be friends_. You don't watch her blush, cheeks heating, flaming red with embarrassment as she stutters apologies and walks away.)

You bite your lip and you say, "Hey, Remus."

He stops and turns around. "What?"

You don't know what to say, you never do, he's the one that's good with words. You don't even know what you want to say.

"Let's charm the mistletoe to follow Snape," you grin. "James is stuck with him in potions tomorrow and it should be fitting revenge for the daisy-tail."

 

**4.**

The train is loud, but not. It's steady, though, the rhythm of it lulls you to drowsing, your head tilted back, down, like you're reading over Remus' shoulder.

(He's reading poetry, and you tell him that no boy reads poetry and he tells you to stop snoring in his ear and would you mind not drooling on his shoulder, please. But he gets out his new Potions book instead. The edges are frayed, and it smells like dust and old books, with ink stains from past years, from past students. He smiles and you smile.)

"Hello, Remus," Evan says, shifting on her feet with her palm to the door.

"'Lo, Lily," he replies, smiling softly, turning away from his book.

"How was your summer?" James asks Evans.

She tosses her hair over her shoulder and turns away, a flash of golden red and Remus watches her with his mouth quirked and James keeps grinning like he knew she'd do that and didn't actually expect her to bow down at his feet in utter shame for how she's treated him so far.

"What about you, Pettigrew?" he asks, turning away from the door to their compartment when it closes behind Evans.

"I-It was good to be home," Peter replies, shifting in his seat, glowing like James was Merlin choosing to address him.

(You wonder if you're the only one going home now. If you're the only one that missed the echo of footsteps in stone hallways and dust in sun in the library and the shadows of places you've never hidden curling around you like comfort with your mates on either side.)

"It'll be good to get back, I think," Remus says, almost looking at you from the corner of his eye, his fingers curling around the edges of his book.

(The pages curl there, whisper against his fingertips.)

"We should—" you say suddenly.

"Yeah," James agrees, eyes lighting up. "We should."

 

**1.**

"You can't," Lupin hisses, his head ducked down, looking away.

And you—you want to laugh, want to sneer, but he wouldn't see so you just—

"Can," you say, James beside you nodding.

Lupin snorts. The sunlight coming through the open window catches the library dust and softens him with it as he turns pages with his fingertips. "Can't," he says, finally raising his eyes to yours. "You've got the wrong charm."

He pauses as you and James look at each other, as you go over—well, do we? Do you think? He pushes the book over, finger tapping at a part of the page.

"This," Lupin whispers, almost shy again, "is the one you want."

 

**15.**

You lie against the curve of his spine.

"Is this what you want?" he asks, twisting, turning, fingers tangling in your hair stealing your breath. "Is it?" he repeats, his mouth just a whisper from yours.

Moonlight that slinks in—through the thin curtains flowing in the breeze—is cold. It strips him of his colour. Sends the room into silver and shadow and it's— (It should burn, should burn him and burn you through burning him. Should turn your skin to ash though the blisters on his.) Like home, almost.

Like Hogwarts when the stone was cold under bare feet and the willow swayed angry in the background, dark against the full moon like Remus is against the sun the next day, broken and bruised and rust coloured bandages that scream _this is your fault. Look what you've done._

You want to think your blood is boiling but— You laugh.

(His fingertips are fire where they press into your scalp. You melt beneath the touch, even as you freeze.)

You're ice. Ice in your blood, in your skin, coming through old wounds sharp as a blade.

You shake your head, and he lets you go.

(It's a sign, you tell yourself. It's a sign and you leave because you're supposed to now: when the world has crashed to silver under the pullback of white fingers. When your shadow is still there to walk away with you and not tangled, hiding from the dawn-light, with his.)

 

**5.**

You watch through half-silted eyelids as he stirs in the bed across from you in the morning.

Dawn stretches out, cold fingers against your spine when Remus stretches. A brush of knuckles along the bumps and hollows of your back, under the bunched up fabric of the robes you slept in.

Remus sighs into the grey of morning, scratching at the bandage that just peeks out from the collar of his pyjamas absently. Stark white against his skin, against the Gryffindor red of his bedcovers.

Your chest catches your breath when he winces. It hitches; stutters like Darlene Berman in Hufflepuff when she has to read out loud in lessons.

He watches you watching him, his brown eyes wide but red-rimmed-tired even after a day of sleep. "Don't," he whispers, his voice rough, raw edged with— "Sirius," he says, closing his eyes.

"Lupin," James says, from his bed to your left, "don't be a twat." But he says it like—Says it softer than James ever says anything, gentle like he's calming Evans from shoving him in the lake. Like, _look, we're on your side here, mate._

"It's not—" he says, curling his arms to his chest almost protectively. He's smaller than you are, smaller than James and Peter and most other boys. It's—He's smaller and every month he's got more bruises than James did after his first five Quidditch games for Gryffindor combined.

You bunch up your blankets in your fists. And you sit up, straightening your spine and—

"Werewolf," Peter says, blunt and not at all gentle and you want to thump him so hard his great-grandchildren will have lumps, but before you can James has tossed a pillow his way to knock into his thick skull.

"Oh," Remus says, going paler than pale. White enough to match the bandages wrapped around his fingers.

"Don't be a twat," you hiss at Peter, a desperate echo of James as you cross the floor—stone freezing under your bare feet—to sit on the end of Remus' bed.

He looks at you again with his eyes wide. You grin as morning curls around your ankle, making you shiver. "Pomfrey let you go or you runaway?"

 

**17.**

You trade one prison for another.

You pace the floors inside the (closing, they're closing in, they've been doing it since you were five, since you were eleven, since you were a Gryffindor, since you returned) walls of the house of your father and your father's father and his father before him.

(You call Harry the wrong name, but only because you're trapped here, only because it was James when you were trapped here before. Only because he's the spitting image and you forget to remember you've forgotten too many years for too long.)

Remus says your name, and you stop. He says sit and you do. You curl up at his feet as a dog (As a memory. He says that name too, and it makes you shiver when you're alone) and sometimes you pretend it's because he's warm and the house is cold.

(Mostly you pretend you don't still want to press him against the bookshelves of the library your father had ruled with an iron fist. Mostly you pretend you don't still dream of your fingers against his skin. Mostly you pretend and mostly he lets you because mostly he does too, when you stop and sigh against the curve of his bottom lip when you back him against the desk he works on.)

"Sirius," he says, and you move away again, because you pretend to remember.

 

**18.**

He's got silver mixed with the copper of his hair.

You brush here and _there_ against him an almost accident.

(The shoulder of your robes whisper just barely against the front of Remus', and you pretend you can feel his heart beating fast against your fingertips flutter against his wrist as you pass almost drunken, almost needing—No. Never needing.)

He leans against the window ledge when day is closing in. The sun is warm yellow behind him, blurring his edges when he turns away, when he closes his eyes and takes a drink of tea and pretends (He doesn't have to pretend, though, wrong choice of words. He doesn't have to pretend.) that you aren't there, aren't watching as dusk turns him to gold like Midas would've if given half a chance.

Your fingers itch with the light of him, and your mouth is dry. His fingers wrap around his teacup to steal the warmth, and you think—

(He's copper and silver and gold in the sunlight. But gold is soft and Remus has his edges smudged with light and shadow, but he's never been soft. He's always been bones and claws and sharp, hard lines of definition in silver.)

You think—

 

**16.**

It's dark and dark and dark. It's counting steps and screams and stones and moons.

(The moonlight slinks in silver through the window, slants in through cracks in the stone, burns across your skin like a reminder. Silver burned him, you remember, silver hurt him almost as much as you. The dementors love when you remember.)

It's (_I didn't do this. I'm innocent. It wasn't me. I'm innocent._) knowing you did this.

It's all your fault.

And then it isn't. Then it's Peter in the Prophet, on the shoulder of a boy. Then it's cold and wet and warm and real. Then it's Remus and his arms and everything falling and everything being almost alright. (And it's the almost, you think, that makes it exactly like it always was.)

 

**11.**

James smiles tightly, across the breakfast table, and Evans sits down beside him almost reluctantly. She bites into the day-glo orange apricot when James offers it.

Remus shakes his head and sits beside you, elbows you in the ribs and says, "Pass the syrup, please, Sirius."

Peter blinks, and opens his mouth to say something that's undoubtedly daft, you just know it, but James kicks him before he can.

You think maybe it's going to be alright. (You tell yourself, at any rate, again and again and--)

"Sirius," Remus says, and kicks you just lightly, "Syrup."

"Right," you say, and smile. Right.

 

**13.**

"Harry," James says, and puts him in your arms more careful than James has ever put anything anywhere.

Harry's got ten tiny, tiny fingers that you count twice, just to be sure. He's swaddled too tightly to count his toes but, well, something tells you Lily would've done that already anyway.

You almost push up the cap he's got on, but it seems like a bad idea to disturb a sleeping baby.

"Sirius," James says, smiling, "Sirius, you know, you're like a brother to me." He steps back, leans back against the wall and crosses his legs at the ankles. Pushes up his sleeves and then crosses his arms in front of him.

(Look, he's saying, see how much I trust you? To leave my firstborn, my pride and joy, sitting right there in your arms?)

"I'd trust you with my life," James continues when you nod, when you drag your eyes away from Harry. "I'd trust you with my son's," he says, "and I've only known him three hours, but let me promise you that there is not much difference between the two. You're the brother I never had, Sirius, and I—Lily and I would like it if you'd consider being Harry's godfather."

Harry's eyes are blue, and wide, his skin almost red and he looks—disgruntled, actually.

And you don't even have to think about it.

 

**19.**

You love him.

 

**12.**

You press your fingertips against the back of his neck, your thumb just brushing against the bump at the top of his spine as you move your hand to his shoulder.

You watch from the corner of your eye as his mouth drops open, as he turns to look at you and—

The camera flashes.

You board the train for London and smile over at him in the seat beside you.

(You don't believe in love, you think, when he's got his long fingers splayed across your thigh. It's bollocks, you remember, when he's got his fingers curled around a bottle as he laughs, as he raises it, as he turns to watch you as he swallows. Love is not love, you repeat, when Remus reads sonnets out loud on Sunday afternoons in the park when you're lying in the grass.)

The world rolls past you outside your window. The world sits outside and opens its arms and (this is the real thing now, you can't hide, you've got to make a play) you've left home for real now.


End file.
